


number my sins on the grocery list (and let me buy)

by gointorosedale



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, M/M, POV Second Person, Weechesters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-26
Updated: 2011-03-26
Packaged: 2017-10-17 07:20:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/174311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gointorosedale/pseuds/gointorosedale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean Winchester is a lot of things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	number my sins on the grocery list (and let me buy)

**number my sins on the grocery list  
**

 

**(and let me buy)**

You run. You know this. You run, and if you were anything more poetic you'd say you were running from your tragic past, from your terrible future, from everything that has been and everything you know will inevitably be.

You're not a poet, though, so when the women you sleep with tell you that, you shrug and quote Hank Williams, _when the lord made me he made a ramblin' man_ with your most charming smile and a twang of an accent that could come from anywhere, but that anyone can recognize as not belonging here.

\--

You work. This is what you know best. The beating of your heart, the pounding of your feet against the asphalt, against the wet grass, the deafening gunshots and the sharp clink of a knife. This is what you know, this is who you are. Hunting is your first and last, the way civilians visit their parents after a bad breakup, you hunt. The racing of your heart is as familiar as an old lullaby. 

Safe, you'd almost say. At least against werewolves and witches, you can protect yourself.

\--

You love. There are so many women willing to disagree with this. Who'll say that you don't love anything, not even yourself. Maybe you don't. Maybe you do. Maybe you love yourself just as much as you should.

The women you sleep with, they're nice. You like them all, you love them all just a bit. You love them for loving you, and you wonder for just a moment if you're really that pathetic, but the thought is chased away with whiskey. You love them, but you're not a stupid enough to believe it would work out in any way, with any of them. You did once, and look what became of that. She called you crazy and threw you out, and you learned.

Whatever they say, you do love, Sammy said it and that makes it true. You tried, because that's the kind of thing you're supposed to do in a moment like that. It's what people do when they kiss like that, slow and sweet, and you know that but that doesn't mean you can do it. So he does it for you, because he's Sammy and he knows you, smiles faintly and says,   
_you love me,_  
like it's a law. It might be an order, because Same knows you do things best when you're obeying an order.

You obey that one for all you're worth. 

\--

You worry about you father. When he leaves, and when he doesn't, when he's bruised and beat and when the enemy is bruised and beat, and when he comes home and crashes on the couch without taking his shoes off.

You worry about your brother, too. When he goes to school and when he doesn't, when he goes over to a friend you don't quite trust and when he comes home with a black eye and a split lip. You grin, crack a joke,  
 _hope the other guy looks worse,_  
and hand him ice like you aren't terrified.

\--

You hurry. You're always in such a hurry, and you are sixteen when you realize that. When you think back of that moment now, the first thing that hits you is the dark murky smell of _too much blood,_ the sharp tang of antiseptic. The raw pain in your shoulder, the clear air and the moonless night sky. The tapping of a shotgun against the wet grass, _swoosh_ sounds over and over.

“Hurry up,” he says. You nod, even as your first instinct is to protest. You are hurrying, you are going as fast as you can. Your shoulder feels raw and torn open. It is.

You pull the needle through your skin, wince. Realize. You are always hurrying, always trying to go fast enough for him and it's never enough. You can never keep up, and you keep on hurrying and hurrying and hoping it will be enough. It never is.

\--

You lie in bed at night and stare at the ceiling and only your pride and your exhaustion keep you from clutching at your shoulder and sobbing.

He's sitting behind the kitchen table, working. You can hear his feint murmuring.

\--

Sometimes it feels like the only thing you do is worry. Work and worry, all the time. It's okay though, because the order is Sammy – Dad – the world – Dean and that's okay, that's the way it's supposed to be. It's what he taught you.

\--

You drink. It's another thing, besides work and worry, it's the space between them. You work, then you worry and then you drink, lather rinse and repeat. You drink because that's what he does, and you do what he does. You think there is probably a good reason for that, but you're too smashed to remember.

\--

You close your eyes, lean back against the wall. The loud laughter, the happy drunken voices carry from the bar out onto the parking lot. Dad called, said he needed you on a hunt. The two of you, you have to leave in half an hour. The cold night air does nothing to sober you up.

\--

The sky is bright in hell. Everything is, bright and dark at the same time and if you weren't already in the worst kind of pain possible, you'd get a headache.

Alistair cuts at your collarbone and you wonder if Sam's been eating enough.

\--

You're angry. You don't know with what, with who. With him, with yourself, with the thing that killed Mom or the guy you're punching, the wall of the school you throw him against. You can't remember why you're fighting. Your anger gets carried out when you drink, more than it usually does. Flows with the vodka and the whiskey, a kind of river with all things bad. You unleash it onto the world when you drink. You drank this morning, before school, but you can't remember why. Can't remember anything with the anger, running like a mantra through your head, white hot _anger,_ like blinking lights and floods, the end of the world, meteors and fires.

The guy groans from his place on the ground, and you look down at him and feel nothing but resentment.

\--

He yells at you. Tells you not to beat up civilians, that your job is to protect them. You listen. You stay in your place. Shoulders hunched. Radiating defeat.

\--

Sam comes to you when you're on the couch, watching TV. Dad is on a hunt, left after cursing at you but didn't forget to say, _look after Sammy,_ and you're tired, and you're curled up on the couch like you're five.

Sammy was at a friends' place again, and you hear the door open, the rustle of paper. Sammy picking up the letter the school sent about the fight.

He approaches the couch cautiously, not because he's scared but because he knows you.

He sits down beside you and drags a hand through your hair. You press your face into his hip and try to pretend that the rest of the world is gone.

\--

You feel. You feel things a lot stronger than other people, you think, because no one ever seems to have the same reactions that you have. You feel so much, so many things all at once that sometimes it's easy to lose yourself and let the whiskey blend it into anger.

You feel like a child, sometimes. You'll never admit this, you'll definitely never say it out loud, but sometimes you feel like a child, and everyone is speaking in a language you don't yet understand, and you're always waiting to get it but it never happens.

You pretend you do. It's the only way to survive.

\--

You're in the backseat of the car, and Sammy's asleep, head pillowed in your lap. It's dark. You wonder how Sam can sleep with the noise from the radio. Dad is breaking the speed limit. Not wearing a seat belt. He told you and Sammy to wear yours. You're eight years old.

\--

You feel a lot of things. You feel guilty sometimes. For all the things you've done to people, all the lives you've ruined because you couldn't get somewhere on time, but also because sometimes you don't think. You remember a girl.

She's tiny, barely comes up to your shoulders, a mess of curly blonde hair around her head, thin wire-framed glasses. Not at all the girl you usually date, more Sammy's kind of girl, probably even a virgin but you like her. You meet her at the school dance. You get her smashed and fuck her behind the coat rack.

When she doesn't show up at school the next day, you feel a flash of guilt. You ignore it.

She approaches you a few days later, proud and angry, tells you you're an ass, and you can tell she's outraged and furious, but she just looks at you, cold and empty. You like her a bit more for that.

You ignore the guilt.

\--

You're packing. You're leaving town again, he said he found a hunt a few hundred miles east. You won't miss this place any more than you miss the other towns.

You're packing. Sam is arguing with Dad, because he doesn't want to leave, and he likes this place and he just wrote this really good essay (it really was, you read it) and he wants to know what the teacher thinks. Dad doesn't care.

You're packing. You've already packed Sammy's stuff, because you know and he knows and Dad knows that no matter what Sam says, you'll leave anyway. This is what you do.

You're packing your own things now, taking shirt after shirt and stuffing it into the duffel bag. Your whole life disappearing, fitting into a small space. Disappearing down the highway in a car.

You pick up a pair of jeans. They're ratty and old and worn and the seams are tearing and there's blood at the torn left knee. You stare at the pants and wonder what on earth happened to get you here, in this moment, on a motel bed packing dirty old jeans. Is it your mother dying? Is it you father, was it Sammy being born, is it the Cold War, is it the coffee you had for breakfast last week? Is it destiny, old stories foretold by old shamans and angels and demons?

You wonder for just a moment, but then you shrug. Stuff the shirt in your bag. You don't believe in angels anyway.

\--

 

The sun is shining, but it does nothing to stop the cold winter chill. It's warm inside though, Mary's bed covered in a pile of blankets.

Mary looks at her son. He's tiny, so innocent and sweet-faced and she wonders how people can take this and raise it as a hunter. Fragile, pure she thinks, and why ruin it?

She looks down at her child and wonders what sort of person he'll be.


End file.
